PROGRAMS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT:
Joelle Puccio BSN RN
Director of Education
Joelle Puccio is a registered nurse working in the field of Perinatal and Neonatal Intensive Care since 2004.
They worked for 7 years as the Director of Women’s Services for the People’s Harm Reduction Alliance, a peer run syringe access program in Seattle, WA, and served on the Board of Directors until 2021. ​
They have been invited to speak at conferences convened by the Harm Reduction Coalition (HRC), the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), and more.
They traveled the country in their RV with their 2 cats as a travel nurse from 2017-2023, in order to learn about the experience of families affected by perinatal substance use and pregnancy criminalization in varying geographic areas. They are now settled in Phoenix Arizona, pursuing their Master of Public Health, working at a specialized facility for infants experiencing withdrawal, and putting down roots in local harm reduction communities.
Their main interest is the intersection of drug user rights and feminism.
They became passionate about advocating for people who use drugs after realizing that everything they had been taught about drugs from childhood through nursing school was wrong.
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Joelle recently published a commentary in the Maternal and Child Health Journal:
Puccio J. (2023). They Will Never Forget How You Made Them Feel: Implementing Harm Reduction in the Perinatal Setting. Maternal and child health journal, 27(Suppl 1), 122–127. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-023-03795-1
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Joelle was featured in the Harm Reduction Coalition's "Amplifying Hope" series.
Here are 8
Harm Reduction Champions
We Want You to Know
